Doubt and Desperation
by Kore Anesidora
Summary: Serana suffers from a bout of crippling doubt at the end of her adventures with the Dragonborn (F), hoping she will not be sent away. One-shot. A sort of prequel to "Adventures in Comedic Romance."


**Just a quick little one shot featuring Serana and (F) Dovahkiin. A sort of prequel to "Adventures in Comedic Romance."**

**Disclaimer: TES is not mine.**

**Enjoy!**

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Desperation clung to her. She thrashed, its strands sticky-wet and carnivorous, and standing still only spun the cradle faster, arachnids weaving around a child's sleeping form, just as they'd done in her mother's garden, fat bellies glistening red and strung between two nightshade blossoms, while nearby the deathbells hung their weary heads heavy with dusk and twilight.

That had been so long ago – the ages passed and gone, her father the shadow of a knife's edge with eyes that had forgotten the look of kindness, her mother cold and guarded, distant as a storm brewing over the Sea of Ghosts – and now her father was dead, slain by her own hand, and her mother still poured over her cauldrons more than over her only daughter, and still that damnable _feeling _remained, desperation mingled and stirred with a heady draught of loneliness.

The land was feed from the poisoned king's grasp, the age-old trope resolved, and now Serana beheld the Dragonborn upon the sloping bridge leading to Castle Volkihar, wreathed in the bloody, hellish light of the blotted sun with a face like triumph and a smile like dominion, as was a dragon's wont and nature. Almost purely out of curiosity Elissa had doused the golden tips of Elven arrows in Serana's tainted blood, and shot them at the sky, ever the curious learner with an adroit acumen enviable and remarkable even for the Archmage of Winterhold.

Perhaps that was why Serana liked her. Or perhaps it was the warmth in her gaze, the flush of life beneath her bronze skin, the animated quality of her hands, always in constant motion, speaking as much as her words. Or perhaps it was power, the power of a dragon's soul trapped in a mortal cocoon of human flesh, for power had always provided impetus for her own actions as well as those of her parents.

"_You're mine now, Serana," _Molag Bal had whispered to her long long ago, his voice a deep crawling caress, as she knelt down in a metal cage of black spikes, hands over her head, bloodied and begging for mercy, for a swift end. And she had died at the King of Rape's hand, to walk the world as a sin, an outrage to the Divines. She had stood, peering around herself, still crouched, a huddled wary animal more fearful of her Lord than any other, imbued with the sorcery of Oblivion. Yes, perhaps it had been power.

Or perhaps it was just loneliness. Always the loneliness, the years spent in absolute solitude, the hours.

Her father would have reviled her for such an attachment, and to a mortal no less. No daughter of his could be anything but perfect, the perfect little lamb led to Molag Bal's altar, then to her own sacrifice for an obscure prophecy to obscure the sun; just as his dark master had done before him, he whispered levels of war in her ear and made her his prodigy of ruin. Even Valerica saw her as a pawn, a thing to be locked away. _For your own protection_, she had said, but Serana had long since grown tired of that line.

Then through the ageless shadows strode a dragon, and though Elissa bore every mark of a human, sometimes Serana swore she could see the ghost of wings and bone riding her Voice, the grinding booming breath that sent the very earth atremble, the mountaintops ringing with her Thu'um. Her family manipulated, calculated; they rolled her between their sharp fingers, mulling over some contrived grievance, some marmoreal board as if any of it mattered, yet a mortal with dragon's fire on her tongue, with teeth that chewed embers and a spirit that was born to bend the will of lesser beings, asked nothing of her and showed her nothing but kindness.

Kindness. How long had it been since anyone had harbored anything remotely akin to kindness towards her? How long since mortals did not shy from her presence, instinctively uneasy by the hunger in her gaze, since fellow immortals did not eye her askance and plot and scheme for Harkon's favor?

Even so somehow Elissa managed to encapsulate the very best and the very worst aspects of her parents, containing the potential to embody them both yet neither at all. She could be unspeakably merciless at times; Serana had seen it when she had killed Ulfric, plunging Tullius' sword into the Jarl's gut and stepping upon his chest to wrench it viciously free, bearing the same look when Serana had killed Harkon, the same look she bore now, fiercely noble, irreparably ruthless, with morals in strange places but a kind heart all the same. Her touch was damp and green, smelling just like Valerica's – all tacky herbs and freshly cut flowers. She carried the same wafting scent of an alchemist, like spring and autumn all mixed up together, freshly rotten leaves and new stalks breaking the loam, dirt caught beneath her fingernails. Studious as her mother, but as attentive a friend Serana could ever hope for.

And now she was leaving without a backward glance.

They stood together upon the bridge, Castle Volkihar looming behind them like a shade that reared up from the void. Elissa had planted fists on her hips, cowl thrown back despite the cold, icy winds lifting her many layered robes like banners soaring above a general's triumphal procession, and slung across her back the arrows still dripping with near black ichor. Serana stood back, refusing to give into the desperation that clawed a harrowing path from gut to throat, the desire to step into the Dragonborn's warm shadow and huddle there and beg for Elissa to take her with, to whisk her off on some other quest, to not leave her behind – not again; she could not handle being locked in a stone tomb, shielded from harm. She wanted to feel sunlight scorch her skin raw, to feel the thrill of discovery, to feel the majestic awe of new lands traversed, to feel anything, _something_.

A member of Dawnguard Elissa may have been, but she had never let Serana's inhumanity deter her. Still doubt lingered. Would Elissa send her away? Would she round upon her and slay her? Did she think her immoral and not to be trusted? Serana had taken great pains to never let Elissa see her feed, waiting long hours through insufferable thirst before sneaking a swig from a Potion of Blood, bitter cold and disgusting.

The only time Elissa had seen Serana even intend to bite another living thing had been during the battle for Auriel's Bow. Rage had lived in her eyes, gold burning with a deeper lustre, and she had lifted the Arch-Curate by his throat, fangs bared in a rictus snarl. Gone was Elissa's new-found friend. Gone the girl who dug holes for bulbs in the earth of her mother's garden with a purloined trowel stabbed into loam with a rolling wrist. Gone the tenacious, snub-nosed child who wandered into Nordic ruins during her mother's searches for forbidden necromantic knowledge, curious, playful and mischievous, with something of a faint cruel streak, as she lured draugr into their own traps, her giggles echoing beneath the sharp slice of Nordic axes hacking the cold-eyed dead into hunks of dessicated flesh, her only friends those that she summoned – the body of a dead cat skinned and resurrected by her own hand. In her place a risen thing - this the Daughter of Coldharbor, the young woman who had willingly offered herself to the degrading rapine of Molag Bal for power undying.

Surely all they had been through together – surely it was enough. It had to be enough.

Nausea clutched her through and through, creeping ivy to her mansion walls, and she could feel the stone foundations waste away beneath her feet, crumbling into the void. She was going to be sick. Elissa was turning around, brimming with boiling exultation, and it was all Serana could do to not gag her black and shriveled heart into her hands, and cast herself upon the ground, and clasp Elissa by her knees, eyes clenched, chin hovering over booted calves, and beg the Dragonborn not leave her behind in the crumbling ruin of her family's wretched memory, surrounded by her father's dead courtiers, the blood splattered furnishings, once more subject to her mother's perennial neglect.

Their journey together was coming to an end, and at last Serana had outlived her usefulness – just as she knew all immortals were cursed to do.

"I hear there's a ship taking passengers to Solstheim from Windhelm," Elissa announced. She cocked her head and asked, "Have you ever been to Morrowind?"

If Serana could have remembered breathing, she would have likened the swooping sensation low in her stomach to a blow to the diaphragm, "I-" she began, but had to stop to swallow thickly and tuck a loose lock of hair behind her ear, "No. I haven't."

"Good! Neither have I!" Elissa nodded sharply, weighing Auriel's Bow and the tainted arrows in her hands with an inquisitive glare, "We'll have to stop by the College first though, and drop these off in my quarters. They warrant further study for when we return."

She flashed Serana an effulgent smile, then tucked the bow and arrows into her enchanted bag, beginning to stride towards the little boat bobbing against the island's glacial shore. When Serana did not immediately follow, Elissa turned back around with a puzzled frown, "Aren't you coming?"

Every sharp remark, every barbed remnant of sarcasm fled her then, and before she knew what she was doing her body had barreled into Elissa's, arms fettering around the warm, grass-scented form, shoulders hunched over the short Breton's own so that Elissa was met with a faceful of silver brooch and oiled black cloak. A started yelp from the Dragonborn, and the pair staggered, almost tumbling down the bridge.

"What did I do?" came Elissa's muffled whine, utterly bemused.

Serana pulled away, "Nothing," she laughed, wiping frozen tears from her cheeks, when really she meant to say _Everything_, "Come on! Let's go!"

And, grasping Elissa's blushing, sticky fingers between her own, cool and smooth, Serana eagerly tugged a confused, bumbling Dragonborn onto the little boat and their next adventure.


End file.
